Lorentzian metric

In differential geometry, a pseudo-Riemannian manifold (also called a semi-Riemannian manifold) is a generalization of a Riemannian manifold in which the metric tensor need not be positive-definite, but is instead only required to be nondegenerate, which is a weaker condition.

Every tangent space of a pseudo-Riemannian manifold is a pseudo-Euclidean space described by a quadratic form, which may be isotropic.

A special case of great importance to general relativity is a Lorentzian manifold, in which one dimension has a sign opposite to that of the rest. This allows tangent vectors to be classified into timelike, null, and spacelike. Spacetime can be modeled as a four-dimensional Lorentzian manifold.

In differential geometry, a differentiable manifold is a space which is locally similar to a Euclidean space. In an n-dimensional Euclidean space any point can be specified by n real numbers. These are called the coordinates of the point.

An n-dimensional differentiable manifold is a generalisation of n-dimensional Euclidean space. In a manifold it may only be possible to define coordinates locally. This is achieved by defining coordinate patches: subsets of the manifold which can be mapped into n-dimensional Euclidean space.

See Manifold, differentiable manifold, coordinate patch for more details.

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